


Swirls on the Curve of the Moon

by fresne



Series: Eid Mubārak [7]
Category: Alphas, Original Work
Genre: Community: eid_fic, Eid ul-Fitr, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-08
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-22 19:54:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/917397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danya had a splendid idea for mischief. A cloak of feathers on the sand, a woman's back turned, what scholar could resist making a jinn his bride.</p><p>That this was not what happened was a different writing on the heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swirls on the Curve of the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Years ago, the original challenge exchange was to write positive representations of Muslim characters for Eid. So... Eid Mubārak.
> 
> Once again for Eid ul-Fitr, I ended up writing something with no plot. This not plotis a follow up on several other Eid fics with original characters.
> 
> [Cup of Charity](http://archiveofourown.org/works/46170)  
> with original characters standing around,  
> [Epic Adventure with Giraffe](http://archiveofourown.org/works/251113), having adventures, and  
> [Ours is No Caravan](http://archiveofourown.org/works/490434) featuring original characters in the Alphas universe.
> 
> Nothing much happens in this story. Sometimes its odd what things decide to come out. Though not as odd as the Giraffe story.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court formally announced that they had not seen the new moon of Shawwal after sunset. They agreed to reconvene on Wednesday. 

Danya was not there. She was sleeping in a forgotten ember of a pile of charcoal sluggish from the evening break to her fast. She dreamed of meat on a stick that peeled off in slow slices of the moon. She dreamed that she was an ifrit in the desert, which wasn't entirely far from the truth and actually was very far from the truth for all she slept in fire pits restless on the coals.

In the morning, she was woke full of restless gusts. She spattered sand at a road sign until all it said was nothing.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court formally announced that the new moon of Shawwal had been seen slicing the evening sky.

Danya was not there, but a breeze told her all about it. She said, "Finally." She cracked her long fingers with their ridges and shifting swirls. 

She went to the mall and purchased an ugly down jacket suitable for a trip to the Atlas mountains or Tibet. She purchased it because she'd needed to own it. Once, long ago, she would have gone to the market and purchased a bag of white swan feathers, but swan feathers were hard to come by these days. She settled for goose as she ripped the jacket apart.

The feathers fell out in a floating explosion. They went where she wanted them to. She cracked the remains of the jacket in her hands while the clerk yelled, "You can't do that."

The was untrue, because Danya did do it. She cracked the jacket and the feathers settled on the outside into a white and grey cloak of feathers. It would have been better if it were swan feathers.

She really would have preferred swan feathers. She could killed a swan to do this, but then the feathers would have been stolen from a swan and not Danya's at all.

Danya swirled the cloak around in the air. It fluttered white over the black of her abaya. She laughed as she spun and spun and spun until she was the whirlwind. She whirled through the desert all night. She didn't sleep. She couldn't have slept. She had an idea for some fun, but she'd been waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and it been far too much waiting for the moon to get with her idea.

Now after prayers and a break to fasting on this of all days, with the sun cracking silver pins of light on the horizon, she went to a pool of water in the desert. It was little more than a slick that seeped up from a spring far below. 

Once there had been palms and bushes that grew up here, but they'd died in the last year or decade or Danya really couldn't be bothered to know. She did not put her bare feet in the water and wriggle her toes. The reason the palms and the bushes had died was that the ground water seeped with the results of the peckings of the oil rigs that like great prehistoric metal birds went up and down at the earth. Since Danya was born of smokeless fire in the same way that man was made of clay, she didn't put her feet in the water. It would have given the game away if the pool caught on fire. Instead she sat with her back to the cloak of feathers that she'd pooled on the sand behind her. She sat with her arms wrapped around her legs and waited.

She was waiting for a scholar to come and find her cloak and force her to be his bride, because a ha, he had her cloak. She grinned at the thought of dazzling the man through days of desert wanderings. It wouldn't be right to do such a thing to just anyone, but any scholar who would put aside his studies to force a jinn to be his bride deserved exactly what he got, and on Eid too when his heart should be full of generosity.

So she waited with gusting breathes across the pool. She heard the roar of the scholars' engines as they raced across the dunes for an early morning ride. It would be any moment now. Any moment one of them would see her and see the cloak of feathers and the fun could begin. A car raced behind her, close enough to make a wind that blew at her abaya, hot for all that it was still early. She turned around to see that the stupid scholars had not even noticed her or her cloak of feathers, which was now smashed and ground and scattered, feathers everywhere, and she could have been crushed if she were crushable. She raised a fist and yelled, "Hey, I'm right here, you idiots."

The racing black cars buzzing on the sand did not answer her.

A soft voice said, "Oh, they destroyed your cloak." A small woman with small gentle hands patted at the feathers. As she knelt, she raised her eyes up. Danya stepped back as if from a blow at that kind gaze for she could see through the woman's eyes and down to where words blazed in an unmistakable script upon the woman's heart. She stepped back and into the pool with her bare feet and Danya had been right not step into it before for it caught a blaze. The woman cried out, "Baha, Najm, help her." 

The woman didn't wait. She didn't hesitate. She stepped forward to the burning water to pull Danya out. Danya let her. She felt the woman's hand on her arm and she did not cry out, "Let go of me." She did not say, "Don't touch me." She blinked five times as she read again and again the words on the woman's heart, while hands patted at her to be sure that she was fine while the fire in the water went out without its source.

A man's voice said, "Mu'mina, don't worry. Clearly she's the fire making sister we haven't met yet." Danya looked at him sharply. A small thin faced man, who vibrated with a familiar energy, grinned back at her. There was no writing on his heart. Nor was there writing on the heart of the grim looking giant of a man standing behind his shoulder. The giant was looking at the remnants of her cloak of feathers. He didn't call her sister, which was fine because she didn't want to be called sister, she wasn't someone who should be called sister, cousin maybe, but certainly not sister, except the woman, Mu'mina, her hand still on Danya's arm smiled with her eyes. "Hello, sister." She let go of Danya's arm and it was a loss. Danya did not care for loss. She made people lose things. She didn't lose things. 

Mu'mina looked back once, almost shyly, and touched the water. The giant said, "Mu'mina, we can't trust this woman." This should have been true. On the whole it was a good idea not to trust Danya at all. Still, she watched the water turn clear and clean at Mu'mina's touch. She watched the wince and knew. She heard the sound of wounds form on Mu'mina's skin. 

Danya wished in that moment that healing was a gift that she'd been given. She could make something out of nothing. She could whirl across the desert as a wind, as a storm, as a fiery blaze crackling over grasslands. She could sleep on a cloud or in a pile of embers. She could dance on the sand with the grains, but healing, no that was not a gift given to her.

She plucked up a handful of goose feathers and they became a long bandage. The little man said, "How did you do that?" The giant said, "Move away from her." His fists crackled with the force of the blow he was preparing to make. Danya pushed back the sleeve on Mu'mina's arm, her hand still wet from the water. Danya wrapped Mu'mina's arm in bandages made from goose feathers. Danya said, "Where are you going, because I am going there too?"

Mu'mina laughed and it was nothing like the way Danya laughed. It was a perfectly human laugh, which matched the beating of her heart without the slightest echo of the writing commanding any who saw it to give aid to this woman. Mu'mina said, "Blessed Eid. Do you know where we can break our fast, sister?"

Danya wrapped Mu'mina's arm in bandages and considered to herself that if she hadn't come out to the pool to make mischief, she never would have met Mu'mina at all. She did not say that the ways of Allah were wondrous strange. She did say, "I know exactly the place." She did.

She led them out of the desert and into city and no one was lost at all along the way.

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


End file.
